Keith989

I don't think that's the reason the game is doing better in France...

There are already rumours of teams starting to break the cap, seems to be plenty of money being thrown about already. The fact that teams are signing players on multi year contracts is really encouraging too.

*British and Irish lions. The Irish are actually recognised with the RU lions, unlike the GB league team.

Does anyone know what kind of viewing figures the GAA is getting on Sky?

Of course they don't when only one tier 2 nation has a chance...

I don't know why you're fixating on Ireland. There are other nations that haven't qualified for the world cup that have wins against tier 1 nations...

Ireland got an increase in funding due to them becoming a test nation and they are bound to end up the same way as Zimbabwe, what about the Netherlands, Scotland, Nepal etc etc... The reason why they went to this format was to guarantee more of the WC tv money going to the best nations.

For the ICC to guarantee more money to the already rich unions at the expense of tier 2 teams ,then that is absolutely not a good reason. If it's such a good reason why doesn't world rugby or even the RLIF do the same? Ireland may be playing all these games in coming years but their home games will be played in front of a man and his dog if their recent games are anything to go by.

How is cricket not unfair when they are reducing the nunber of teams in the WC? There is no other reason other than financial to do this, given the sheer amount of upsets in both t20 and 50 over world cups. What we are seeing now is the death of interest in cricket in Ireland when it was all looking so promising only a few years ago. I can imagine it's the same for the Netherlands, Scotland etc.

The Scotland game was played in Murrayfield...

Another example is in the 2007 WC when Portugal played the All Blacks and the Portugese players were in tears of joy before the game despite knowing they were in for conceding 100+ points. I really don't understand this fear of blow outs in RL. It's simply unavoidable and the world cup is a celebration of the sport anyway.

A few blow out scores are inevitable but like you said, we can't fear them, otherwise you could end up with only a few teams like the cricket world cup. If you look at union where Japan have gone from conceding over 100 points against NZ to beating South Africa in just a couple of world cup cycles, you can see teams can improve with that international exposure.

I'm fairly sure all the tickets were sold, I certainly remember people complaining about not being able to get their hands on tickets. I'm not sure why all the stadiums would be 50k? even football world cups use 30k capacity stadiums. It's good to use rugby specific stadiums too such as Sandy Park.

Not sure how the attendances in 1987 count for much when the last world cup in England had 2.4m people through the gates with an average attendance capacity of 95%.

I think a Barbarians style team would work much better if you want another competitive team. The team could consist of the best players from around the world that haven't been called up to their national teams. It works well in union and they manage to pull really good crowds which always amazed me to be honest.